


Siren Song

by FactorialRabbits



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Character Study, Depression, Hurt No Comfort, Sea-longing, Suicidal Thoughts, attempting suicide by heroics, explicate but unexplored memory loss, headcanon heavy, something very old I found while looking for something else in my googleydocs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-12
Updated: 2020-05-12
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:08:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24148714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FactorialRabbits/pseuds/FactorialRabbits
Summary: The Sea does not give, only takes away.
Relationships: Eärendil & the Sea, Eärendil/Elwing (Tolkien)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 10





	Siren Song

His father sings of the Horns of Ulmo, when Eärendil is but seven years of age. It is at a memorial feast for all the dead of Gondolin - and all those who have died since, and the people had been begging for that specific song. Though they cannot stay forever, this place is under Ulmo's protection; they can rest and heal and grieve for the time they have, until again they must press on to the sea. He does not understand why father insists on going to the sea, not until that moment. 

Eärendil does not hear the horns.

What he hears is an ancient, formless voice. And what he feels is something almost grabbing his soul, tugging at it. Embedding itself there, slowly draining pieces of himself away.

He gasps and his father turns to him, 'no' on his lips and horror in his eyes.

Nobody else can hear it, not yet.

But Eärendil does not notice, for all he can hear is the rushing of waves and the voice like a whisper against his ear. He does not even notice that his father has taken him away from the feast for hours - not until he manages to fight past the all-consuming of the ocean. The voice is still there, whispering  _ come come come to me come _ but he can ignore it for now. Almost, anyway. You can never truly ignore something like that. 

He is cradelled on his father's lap - father who is sobbing and begging for mercy - and mother is running her fingers through his hair, and father's too, and a healer is fussing about them.

"Why are you crying, father? What is wrong?"

His voice is small, and father only holds him closer, rocks them both, and sobs all the harder.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," father cries.

"Shhh, shh, I love you, you are safe, all will be well, shhh,” mother cooes

‘ _ Come, little peredhel, come unto the seas. Come little peredhel, come and join with me _ ,” the voice sings.

Eärendil burrows his face into father's chest, reaching for mother with one hand. She takes it, kissing it and holding it close to her heart.

He does not understand exactly what is wrong, not yet, only that something has immutably and irreparably changed.

* * *

By the time they reach Sirion, Eärendil knows why father must go out onto the sea. Why he cannot be with them any more. He can ignore the calling for his lessons, and he plays with Princess Elwing. But whenever he stops focusing on not paying attention, his eyes turn towards the ocean, and its siren call. Mother finds him and sighs and rocks him, until finally he finds his way back.

The next year he has to wade into the shallows to silence it, to give in and enter the ocean for its song to give way. Princess Elwing is starting to do better in her classes than he, for he can rarely concentrate enough to pay attention. Mother is unhappy, but for a while it is enough.

After he turns ten, but before he turns eleven, father starts taking him out on his shorter journeys, teaching him to sail the boat. Its a trade, at least; he learns to fish with both lines and nets, and this is the most he has seen of his father in years. He declares that, someday, he will sail all the way to the west, and force the Valar to save his people. All of them. The Princess is proud of his attempts, and he is proud of how adept she is at the studies of state. Mother tells him that, at his birth, she foresaw that he will succeed. And, even if she had not, the other prophecies all say that he must.

He turns fifteen, and by now he knows what happens if he does not give in; the world will turn grey, until he is driven from it by the fact only love of the sea remains. For the sea is a jealous lover, and is stealing away every other bit of joy and love he has piece by piece by piece, and his memory too. He hates the sea for it, but he still loves it. And there are only three loves left to him - his parents, the sea, and Princess Elwing. Mother tries to hide it from him, but she cries each time he leaves. And every time he forgets something else, too.

He is twenty two. His wedding is planned, and for a time the sirens are at bay. His joy at his marriage, about bonding with Elwing, is so great it drowns it out. But not all is well; his parents have promised to stay to see him wed, but father is old. Not only is he old, but the call of the sea has consumed him. He can barely sit up for all the energy it has stolen, let alone stay. He goes to sea and is well on the waters, but he comes back and it is only worse; the joy never returns. He knows that, soon, he will lose his father to the ocean. Father leaves on his wedding night, even as he consecrates his marriage. Mother leaves too.

When he is twenty nine, his sons are born. They are beautiful and everything to him, and he loves them with all he is. Everything pales next to them. Everything but the sea.

* * *

He tries. He does everything he can to silence the longing, to fight it, to stay with his children and love them as he should. Still it calls to him -  _ oh peredhel peredhel, where have you gone? Come back to me, or loose yourself to my song. The water is wet and the skies are clear, would you not so much rather be here _ ? 

After two years of his attempts, Elwing begs him to try again, to leave again; he is so consumed by the song that everyone worries, that he not even barely functions as a person, just sits at the window and gazes to sea, seeing and hearing almost nothing of the world. 

Still, he does not wish to leave his family for as long as he can get away with; he manages to make a deal with the siren-song - he will not go to the ocean yet, but he will build a ship worthy of her, and capable of taking him all of the way west. Cirdan hesitates, but agrees to help. Eärendil will travel west, with three mortals who were once his friends and he now can barely name, and he will plead to the Valar for both of his races. 

He fully expects to die either on or at the conclusion of his quest.

And, honestly, he's fine with that.

Maybe, if he's dead, the song will finally shut up.

* * *

He goes further and further and further, giving the ocean more and more of himself in the hopes of a few more moments, a little more time, another laugh or story or smile with his sons.

It is never enough.

He tries to wait until he cannot physically stay longer, until the longing has drained so much of him away that he is little more than flesh stretched over bone, unable to perceive anything but the call. Then he drags himself to the sea once more, and sets off. Elwing frowns a little harder each time she stands on the shore and watches him leave, holds him a little tighter each time he comes back, cries a little longer each time he forgets.

He pushes himself to breaking point every time. At least for a while; eventually, the twins grow old enough to realise when he is ill. They know of illness, though thankfully only of the mortal types. And they cry and sob and try to make him better each and every time he fails to find the energy to drag himself from his bed. 

He cannot bring himself to hurt them more than he already has, cannot decide if being truly gone or being only physically present is worse for them. Which upsets them more.

When Elwing tells him that his sons are most upset when he is ill, he cannot bring himself to stay.

He starts staying less and less, leaving once he finds himself to smile. It's a struggle to be there at all, now he has given in, but he tries. He tries as well he can; his children are beautiful and bright and joy incarnate if a little unsettling in that way all peredhel children can be, and the more he gives in the more he appreciates them for everything they are.

The ocean is happy to see him more often, after all. But it would rather he came deeper, further, harder still. It wants him to come West, sings to him of the West, and how dangerously sweet are the words it brings? He hesitates and struggles and tries to force it silent; he knows he must go to Valinor, he knows it has been spoken of as his fate to cross the ocean, he knows it is his doom for to the siren song die.

Eventually, though, it is not enough. He thought - honestly believed - that it would be enough. He went as far as he dared, gave so much of himself to the sea. But, one day, he returns home, and the life doesn't come back. 

Elwing and the boys are there to greet him. She kisses him, and they pull him and hug him and demand his attention, and he feels… Nothing. No love, no joy, no hope - all he sees and knows is dead and grey and gone. 

He falls to his knees and takes them in his Elros and his Elrond arms. They radiate concern, but it barely reaches him. He clings to them, sobbing. Why is he not happy to see them? Why can he not find only grief at their reunion? … Why can he not love them as they deserve?

He had lost the love of everything but his wife and his children and the sea.

Now he has lost his family, too.

He wants to love them, he wants to be thrilled to see them - and he does love them, he loves them more than life itself, he is sure that he does. More than anything else in Ea or beyond. He knows this, it is an absolute truth. One maybe drowned by the song, but it must be there, he knows it to be true!

...

So why can he not feel anything?

So many have tried to cross the sea, dying in the storms and the dark and the lonely horror of Ulmo’s home. The sea took his love for the world and for the green places. The sea took his parents, on what should have been the happiest of days. And now the sea has taken his love for his wife and his sons; there is nothing left any more, nothing but the irresistible call of the sea.

A sickly, sticky sweet song he is sure he would hate if he could find the energy to even try.

At least, he supposes, if the sea kills him he will not have to deal with its siren-song any more. Will not have to deal with how only by being upon it he can feel.

The next time he leaves, he knows he will not be able to return.

* * *

He is sailing and on the ocean, and still Eärendil cannot rest. Here the siren call does not trouble him, but worry for his people does. All his is and was and will ever be is consumed by the fear for his children and his wife and his people. He knows his dreams are no mere dreams, and that the currents have so suddenly shifted to lead them back towards Sirion even as the winds beat them back can only be Ulmo's own warning. They sail and sail and sail, praying they will make it in time, and yet knowing they can not. 

He sits at the helm of the boat, wrapped in a blanket as his tired eyes watch still. The moon is shining brightly, and Erellont keeps them on course even as the others sleep. They keep telling Eärendil to rest. He does not; has forgotten how.

Instead he stays on watch, praying to any and all the Valar that his family are safe. Tells them he will offer anything he has - his life, his death, his body, his mind and soul... anything - if only they will keep his wife and children safe.

When he sees the light coming from the East, he knows his prayers are meaningless. And that he is too late. He curses the sea and its siren song, all that has pulled him so far. That stopped him from being any help at all.

He would recognise his wife anywhere, in any form, but the silmaril still around her neck gives her away. He doesn't know what has happened, or why she is alone, but for the first time in days he moves from his vigil at the prow, even if only to reach out to her.

Eärendil expects his wife to land on his arm. He does not expect her to fall from the sky.

Not quite quick enough to catch his fallen wife, now a bird and shivering even in her unconscious state, Eärendil instead gathers her carefully into his arms. As he tucks her beneath his shirt, carefully over his heart, she is cold as ice itself. But he can feel her breathe against his chest; there is some form of hope still. He cradles her form, squinting out over the ocean to see if any other birds are with her. He thinks he sees two smaller gulls for a moment, but it is merely a trick of the moon's light.

He wishes his heart would grieve, but, somehow, he had long known that it was true.

When the winds fall silent, he knows then it is hopeless.

Ulmo has retracted the haste; there is no longer any reason for him to return to Sirion.

His sons, his beautiful, precious sons, are dead.

He tells Erellont to set the anchor and that they will work out a plan in the morning. Without waiting for a reply, he finally heads below deck. Discarding his shirt, he burrows under the blanket, and wraps Elwing tightly in his arms.

He has no idea if she will be able to return to her own form, knows not what horrors she has seen or what will happen now. Indeed, there are an awful, awful lot of things he does not know. Just that Sirion is gone, and so are his children - his half-elven children, who have no fate beyond their deaths. Who are not just dead but are as though they never existed.

He knows that, unless he can make it over the mountains of Aman, that his cries might be heard by the Valar, and unless those cries are convincing enough, that every last elf, man and dwarf in Middle Earth will die in grief and torment, under Morgoth's thumb. That there is no hope left within Middle Earth, that nobody can save themselves. So he will go, he will give everything he has, for the hope that as few people as possible have to know this pain. He will plead on behalf of all his peoples; he will tear the Doom of Mandos, he will break the Ban of the Valar, and force them to listen.

He will save his people, and he will die for that crime.

He cannot think of anything he wants more.

* * *

Somehow, he makes it to Valinor. He leaves Elwing on the shore; she must not suffer more than need be. The sirens are quiet now, for the first time in his memory. He would weep for joy, but that he still grieves his children. Not just their lives, but the time with them that was lost to the sea. There is little left of Eärendil now; he does not believe the world can be saved, that any hope is still within it, at least not for him… He will never know peace or love or joy again, not in that world, and not in any other. 

But he continues on regardless, driven by the knowledge that this is what he is all there is left for anyone.

Driven by the chance to spare even just one person from pain.

He makes it, he makes his case, they agree. There is no elation in the victory, nor in the offer of the choice to chose his fate. The emotions when he learns his sons escaped the bloodshed, that they are alive, are too raw for him to process; he cannot understand what he has been told - his children are dead, but they are not dead, and the fact they are not seems to shake the very core components of his reality. With the determination to save the world gone, there is nothing. 

Somehow he makes it back to Elwing, and he can barely perceive her as a person; he found her on the beach, and upon seeing the waves again the whisper of the sirens comes back. He wants to die. He wants to die right now and be gone from this reality. He thinks he would still want to be mortal regardless of what happened, and is not sure he could ever be happy living forever, but also knows he is in no state to make such a choice. So he hands it over to Elwing.

And she decides they will be elves.

So elves they will be.

They go to tell the Valar, and expect either to be killed and sent to Mandos for their crimes, to be reborn later washed clean and anew (that would be fine, Eärendil things, just so long as Mandos washes the siren’s mark from him as well). 

Instead, the Valar tell him he must take the silmaril to the sky, as a beacon of hope to a world sorely lacking in it. That this is the service they ask of him in return for the lives of his wife and children (his children? He thinks if he were someone else he would have laughed - his children are dead, and he doubts he will ever have another). 

Eärendil, instead, cannot bring himself to feel anything. Elwing beside him yells at the Valar, screams it is not fair to use his desperation for their own ends. The King of the Noldor is more reserved, but pleads for his nephew - for them to at least give him time to rest before he is sent beyond - nonetheless.

Nobody stops him from stepping out of the Máhanaxar. The woman who calls herself his great-grandmother opens her arms to him. He leans against her, and she embraces him. He is too drained to care, too exhausted to weep, too hopeless to try and silence the siren song resurging in his mind . She braids her fingers into his hair and rocks him as his parents did what feels like an age ago, and it is as little comfort now as it was then.

He does not want to be comforted, does not want to be calmed, does not want to hear false promises that everything is alright now.

He just... wants everything to stop.

Is that really too much of him to ask?


End file.
